Christian
congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening
when

Chairman Mao's death in 1976Photo: ALAMY

It is said to be China's biggest church and on Easter Sunday
thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their
allegiance – not to the Communist Party, but to the Cross.

The 5,000-capacity Liushi church, which boasts more than twice
as many seats as Westminster Abbey and a 206ft crucifix that can be seen for
miles around, opened last year with one theologian declaring it a "miracle
that such a small town was able to build such a grand church".

The £8 million building is also one of the most visible symbols
of Communist China's breakneck conversion as it evolves into one of the largest
Christian congregations on earth.

"It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
It gives us great confidence," beamed Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor
who was admiring the golden cross above Liushi's altar in the lead up to Holy
Week.

"If everyone in China believed in Jesus then we would have
no more need for police stations. There would be no more bad people and
therefore no more crime," she added.

Officially, the People's Republic of China is an atheist country
but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and
spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied.

Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since
churches began reopening when Chairman Mao's death in 1976 signalled the end of
the Cultural Revolution.

Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised
to become not just the world's number one economy but also its most numerous
Christian nation.

"By my calculations China is destined to become the largest
Christian country in the world very soon," said Fenggang Yang, a professor
of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and
Revival under Communist Rule.

"It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people
are prepared for this dramatic change."

China's Protestant community, which had just one million members
in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with
an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in
China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa,
according to the Pew Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life.

By 2030, China's total Christian population, including
Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the
United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted.

Like many Chinese churches, the church in the town of Liushi,
200 miles south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province, has had a turbulent history.

It was founded in 1886 after William Edward Soothill, a
Yorkshire-born missionary and future Oxford University professor, began
evangelising local communities.

But by the late 1950s, as the region was engulfed by Mao's
violent anti-Christian campaigns, it was forced to close.

Liushi remained shut throughout the decade of the Cultural
Revolution that began in 1966, as places of worship were destroyed across the
country.

Since it reopened in 1978 its congregation has gone from
strength to strength as part of China's officially sanctioned Christian church
– along with thousands of others that have accepted Communist Party oversight
in return for being allowed to worship.

Today it has 2,600 regular churchgoers and holds up to 70
baptisms each year, according to Shi Xiaoli, its 27-year-old preacher. The
parish's revival reached a crescendo last year with the opening of its new
1,500ft mega-church, reputedly the biggest in mainland China.

"Our old church was small and hard to find," said Ms
Shi. "There wasn't room in the old building for all the followers,
especially at Christmas and at Easter. The new one is big and
eye-catching."

The Liushi church is not alone. From Yunnan province in China's
balmy southwest to Liaoning in its industrial northeast, congregations are
booming and more Chinese are thought to attend Sunday services each week than
do Christians across the whole of Europe.

Among China's Protestants are also many millions who worship at
illegal underground "house churches", which hold unsupervised
services – often in people's homes – in an attempt to evade the prying eyes of
the Communist Party.

Such churches are mostly behind China's embryonic missionary
movement – a reversal of roles after the country was for centuries the target
of foreign missionaries. Now it is starting to send its own missionaries
abroad, notably into North Korea, in search of souls.

"We want to help and it is easier for us than for British,
South Korean or American missionaries," said one underground church leader
in north China who asked not to be named.

The new spread of Christianity has the Communist Party
scratching its head.

"The child suddenly grew up and the parents don't know how
to deal with the adult," the preacher, who is from China's illegal
house-church movement, said.

Some officials argue that religious groups can provide social
services the government cannot, while simultaneously helping reverse a growing
moral crisis in a land where cash, not Communism, has now become king.

Ms Shi, Liushi's preacher, who is careful to describe her church
as "patriotic", said: "We have two motivations: one is our
gospel mission and the other is serving society. Christianity can also play a
role in maintaining peace and stability in society. Without God, people can do
as they please."

Yet others within China's leadership worry about how the
religious landscape might shape its political future, and its possible impact
on the Communist Party's grip on power, despite the clause in the country's
1982 constitution that guarantees citizens the right to engage in "normal
religious activities".

As a result, a close watch is still kept on churchgoers, and
preachers are routinely monitored to ensure their sermons do not diverge from
what the Party considers acceptable.

In Liushi church a closed circuit television camera hangs from
the ceiling, directly in front of the lectern.

"They want the pastor to preach in a Communist way. They
want to train people to practice in a Communist way," said the
house-church preacher, who said state churches often shunned potentially
subversive sections of the Bible. The Old Testament book in which the exiled
Daniel refuses to obey orders to worship the king rather than his own god is
seen as "very dangerous", the preacher added.

Such fears may not be entirely unwarranted. Christians' growing
power was on show earlier this month when thousands flocked to defend a church
in Wenzhou, a city known as the "Jerusalem of the East", after
government threats to demolish it. Faced with the congregation's very public
show of resistance, officials appear to have backed away from their plans, negotiating a
compromise with church leaders.

"They do not trust the church, but they have to tolerate or
accept it because the growth is there," said the church leader. "The
number of Christians is growing – they cannot fight it. They do not want the 70
million Christians to be their enemy."

The underground leader church leader said many government
officials viewed religion as "a sickness" that needed curing, and
Prof Yang agreed there was a potential threat.

The Communist Party was "still not sure if Christianity
would become an opposition political force" and feared it could be used by
"Western forces to overthrow the Communist political system", he
said.

Churches were likely to face an increasingly "intense"
struggle over coming decade as the Communist Party sought to stifle
Christianity's rise, he predicted.

"There are people
in the government who are trying to control the church. I think they are making
the last attempt to do that."